Marc Khatchadourian, an NDSU emergency management graduate student from Milwaukee, won first place in the International Association of Emergency Managers graduate poster presentation competition at the association’s annual conference in Orlando, Fla., in November.

Khatchadourian’s poster is titled “Establishing an Informational Management System During the Fargo Flood of 2009.” The poster describes the methods used to gather, record and manage disaster call center information during the spring 2009 Fargo flood. Thousands of calls requesting sandbagging assistance were put into the community call center during the flood presenting a significant need for resources. Large volumes of calls to offer assistance were received as well.

The poster presentation provides details of the methods used to record the response needs and resources, sort the requests and assistance offers by geographic areas in the city, and allocates resources accordingly.

In 2008, Breanna Koval won the undergraduate poster competition at the association’s annual conference. Koval is an emergency management graduate student at NDSU.